


In a world that wasn't mine to take

by heavenisalibrary



Series: Tumblr Prompt Fills [17]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 20:42:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2202378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavenisalibrary/pseuds/heavenisalibrary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“No,” River says, closing her eyes and leaning into him. “I don’t like water.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a world that wasn't mine to take

**Author's Note:**

> prompt: the first time river lets the doctor reach out and comfort her?
> 
> The timeline makes no sense, sorry.

There’s about a century-long grace period in his timeline where he and River are more or less on the same page of their little blue books. Sometimes they’re missing a paragraph here and there, but oh, those days they meet in the middle are some of the best of his very long life.

Coming off of that, it’s almost unbearable to be sat across from a very young, very troubled, very traumatized, very angry River Song, whose face is always carefully blank. Once he told her that she never had to hide from him, that he could match every terrible thing she’d ever done with something he had, that they were the only ones in the universe who could forgive one another, and he’d forgive her everything — as she would him — always and completely.

Of course, she hasn’t been there yet, and all he can do is watch.

She touches him often, this young, even though they’re not as intimate as they one day will be. She’ll tell him in her future that the unconscious, affectionate touches he showered her with at the beginning of her timeline caused her no small amount of distress — she wasn’t used to it, didn’t know how to react to it, wanted to lean into his palm and snap his neck in the same instant, she said — and so he reins himself in, wriggling his fingers at his sides and shoving them in his pockets and overcompensating for his overwhelming need to pull her to him and hug the life out of her with even wilder gestures than usual.

He knows she’ll talk to him, eventually. She knows she’ll tell him everything because it’s already happened for him, but for a long time he’s sure he’s dreadful company, because he knows her — she hides herself well, but as far as he’s concerned she’s his wife, has been for too long to count, and he knows the exact nigh-imperceptible shift of muscles on her face when she’s controlling her expression; he knows what her smile looks like when she’s faking it, and knows that she shows too many teeth when she’s just barely suppressing the urge to do something she shouldn’t; he knows how her eyes look when she’s open and present, and how they look when she falls back into that little hole that sits somewhere between her hearts, full of things she can’t quite remember and things that go bump in the night. She’s perhaps even better, he thinks, at hiding her struggle so young — when she’s older and more human she actually has emotions to hide. This young, he knows, she’s mostly trying to cover for her lack of understanding of everything she feels. Being a weapon, she told him once, was hard work — unlearning it was even harder.

He watches her relearn how to exist, clenching his hands at his sides as he heeds her future self’s warnings. He watches her struggle to understand the vehemence with which he emphasizes compassion and kindness and the sanctity of life — he watches her as she slowly comes to understand that his reliance on these things comes from all the times he disregards them — and watches her grow more comfortable with her own name. She responds to it almost immediately, but it’s years before he ever hears her say her own name; when she’s at her youngest, she never even introduces herself by name, just natters on until he does it for her. She slowly moves past her training, untying years of conditioning in her mind like so many knots, but the hardest thing to watch, as she learns to be a person, is her coming to terms with the trauma.

The Doctor’s been all over the universe, traveled through time and space, so on and so forth, but very little has been so taxing as watching his too-young wife work through decades of abuse and neglect and being unable to hold her hand. She touches him often, and he thinks it’s perhaps because she needs that contact and confirmation that she’s real, but he’s careful to let her initiate and control it. He curbs the impulse to pull her to him when she fakes a smile, bites back to kiss away the frown lines on her face she doesn’t think he sees, and tucks his hands into his armpits to keep from grabbing her hand and running her away from anything that causes her pain. They’ve done Utah, the first time for her, by the time she finally starts to open up to him. It’s half, he thinks, because she’s finished her study of him, and half out of necessity at the time.

He shows up at Stormcage and brings her onto the TARDIS, telling her about the party he’s going to take her to — somewhere in the future, big fancy event, on top of a roof with a pool and an ambiance that’s supposed to be once-in-a-lifetime. He fiddles with the console as she gets ready and when she returns, she tugs on the tight red dress she wears in a distinctly non-River-like manner.

"Not bad, hm?" she says with a raise of her brow and a smirk as he looks her up and down. She does this a lot, in early days — asks him about her appearance or her work in a way that makes it seem like she’s merely looking for confirmation on what she already knows. But he can tell she’s thirsty for acceptance, approval, validation, and he gives it to her readily. If he didn’t already know it’d make her uncomfortable, he’d devote linear months to expounding upon all of her wonderful qualities.

"You look amazing," he says, standing up with a bit of a bounce and striding toward her. The dress is short and tight, as usual, deep red that makes her look dangerous. But what’s most captivating is the expression of pleasure that takes over her face at his words, and he can’t help but reach up and tap her on the nose. "The face that launched a thousand ships," he says, somewhat distractedly — it’s not what he meant to say, but he smirks a bit the moment the words pass his lips.

River snorts. “How poetic. Hardly Helen of Troy, Doctor. Few thousand years too late, for one.”

"Well, time travel," says the Doctor, "and not poetry so much as, erm, actual fact but, uh — spoilers, you know."

“Ohh,” River coos, grinning up at him, “I do like a good teaser.”

He grumbles something about how she is a good teaser, and River laughs, patting him on the cheek and exaggerating the sway of her hips as she walks away from him. He hurries along behind her and she tucks her arm into his as they make their way to the party.

 

 

He thinks it probably would’ve been a lovely evening if the pool-and-roof-deck combination wasn’t also surrounded by water. He probably should’ve done more research. There’s a maze of walls, on the roof, terribly high and filled with running water that bubbles and gurgles softly. There are lights shining through it, and it’d be exceptionally lovely, thinks the Doctor, if River didn’t have a history with being submerged in water for long periods of time against her will. It occurs to him a minute after they’ve stepped out onto the roof and started walking into the maze, River clutching his arm tightly, and they’ve just turned a corner when he realizes what an idiot he is and immediately turns to look at her.

She’s white as a sheet, her eyes wide and scared, and when he moves to face her, placing his hands on either side of her face, she stumbles slightly at the loss of support.

"River," he says, "I’m so sorry, I didn’t think —"

"I’m fine, sweetie," she says, "I’m just feeling a bit… I think the prison food is getting to me, maybe —"

“River,” he says.

"Really," River says, "whatever they served yesterday was positively appalling. I think it had eyes. Possibly a heartbeat…" she trails off, her eyes darting over his shoulder to dart around their surroundings. Walls of water surround them, and she gulps, closing her eyes for a second. He wants to drag her out of there immediately, but he felt the shift the moment they’d entered the maze — it’s meant as part of the party, a semi-sentient maze that moves and shifts around its guests so it’s never the same until they come to the party at the center. The only way out is to go further, and he doesn’t know if she can do it. He kisses her forehead.

"You never eat the prison food,” the Doctor says. “Usually you pop out to eat.”

"Yes, well," she says, licking her lips. Her voice is thin. "It’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?"

This is one of the moments he wants to push her. He sighs, leaning forward to rest his forehead against hers. After a moment, he pulls back, kissing her temple, and reaching down to wrap her hand in his.

"Alright, then, let’s sally forth," he says. "If you feel…" he trails off, breathing deeply before facilitating her lie, "if you feel ill, lean on me. I’ve got you, River."

She nods, and wraps herself around him like a vine as he begins to lead her through the maze of water. He goes on and on about anything and everything he can think of, trying to distract her, but she’s silent and tense beside him. Finally, she speaks.

"It’s not the prison food," she says.

"It’s alright," he says, "you don’t have to —"

She shakes her head. “I need to.”

"Okay," he says, stopping and turning toward her again. He places his hands on either side of her face again, stroking her cheekbones with his thumbs. "Go on."

"I’m scared," she says. "Really, properly scared of water. It’s stupid — absolutely absurd, it’s just… I spent my whole life being their pawn. I was moved from place to place, body to body, life to life. I did what I was told every minute of every day — mostly — and then Berlin happened and I broke the loop. I sided with you." She pauses, licking her lips. "Do you want to know a secret, Doctor?"

"I want to know all of your secrets," he says.

She smiles slightly, the expression pained, and he leans in to kiss her because he can’t possibly do anything else. She kisses him back, her fingers digging into his arms where they rest, her mouth desperate against his — he runs his hands up and down her body, settling them around her waist and holding her to him even after they part. She kisses his throat, sighing before she continues.

"In Berlin," she says, "I brought you back to life. Sometimes Rory gets cross with me about it — not that he didn’t want you back, don’t make that face, you idiot — but because he worries sometimes that I don’t make all of my decisions for me. He thinks I do too much for love of you — as though he’s one to talk — and he’s wrong. I don’t know if you understand that, either. I didn’t save you in Berlin because I cared about you — I didn’t know you. You were a nightmare abstract to me; I grew up hearing about all the lives you didn’t save, all the worlds you burned. I understand now, of course — would you stop looking like a kicked puppy?”

"I’m sorry!"

"You will be,” she says, huffing, “because I’ll actually kick you if you don’t stop. But I — I didn’t save you because I loved you. I saved you because you loved me. You loved me enough to sacrifice your life, multiple regenerations, just to give me a choice. You could’ve explained to me before you died, all sorts of things that would’ve brought me to your side. You could’ve manipulated me or strong-armed me or any number of things. Instead, you gave me a choice. You showed me River Song, showed me who I could be, and let me pick. I — I don’t know if I’ve already said this, for you, but that was everything to me, honey. The ability to, for the first time in my life, choose my identity. And I brought you back because I was so very greedy to be loved.”

“You are,” says the Doctor, “by so many, and so much.”

“Yes, well, to go from that — to go from finally having some control, some power that wasn’t derived from my ability to shoot a gun to being dragged back into that horrible suit and shoved miles under the surface of the lake and held there for hours until I was forced to — to kill you again, to undo the act that made me feel like an actual person…”

“You don’t like water,” says the Doctor.

“No,” River says, closing her eyes and leaning into him. “I don’t like water.”


End file.
